Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Extreme folly or stupidity.
  • noun A foolish or stupid utterance or deed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being an idiot; natural absence or marked defect of understanding; mental imbecility. See idiot.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The condition or quality of being an idiot; absence, or marked deficiency, of sense and intelligence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun psychology The state or condition of being an idiot; the quality of having an intelligence level far below average; mental retardation.
  • noun An act lacking intelligence or sense; an instance of senselessness; extremely foolish behaviour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun extreme mental retardation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From idiot.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Could be from Ancient Greek ἰδιωτεία (idioteia), or perhaps simply from idiot + -cy.

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